Nikolai N. Seleznyov

The & Its : History of Studies

In touch with the , the Church of Mesopotamia at­ tracted the attention of many Greek authors, first of all, those of the Eastern part of the Roman, afterwards Byzantine, Empire, who wit­ nessed the appearance of centres of theological thought in the Aramaic East. The writings of the Eastern authors were read in wider circles than those they were intended for. Thus, the Legend ofAbgar and the Teaching of Addai, documents referring to the very origins of Christianity in Mesopotamia, became widely known. The persecutions that the Christians of the East suffered under the Sasanids had an impact on Christians living in the 'Western lands', and Aphrahat, the first great author of the Aramaic theological tradition, who mentions the persecutions in his Demonstrations, soon became well known there. The Persian Schools of and Nisibin.' headed by Mar Ya'qob of Nisibis and his disciple (Mar 'Aprern Suryaya) won an (Ecumenical celebrity and played a decisive role in the formation of the Mesopotamian school of exegesis and theology, as well as in the gradually developing polemics between representatives of increasingly different traditions of the 'West' and the 'East' of the Christian world. The controversies, especially bitter over the Christological terminology and concepts, were abundantly reflected in the writings of many 'Western' authors. This period - when, in the arguments, different sys­ tems of theology were developed - concludes with the summarizing works of a prominent '', the last Greek writer of the East, John of Damascus. After him, the polemical works of Byzantine-oriented authors, as it is seen in the writings of 'Abd Allah b. Al-Fadl al-Antaki, in­ troduced no new terms and formulas and dealt with a speculative 'Neste­ rianism' formulated earlier. The witness of Islamic religious comparative studies is therefore of some value. The confessions of different religious communities, includ­ ing the Church of the East, were analysed by Moslem researchers, ex-

I Commonly known as Nisibis.

OCP 74 (2008) 115-131 116 NIKOLAIN.SELEZNYOV ploring the religions in the Caliphate in the 9th to 15th centuries. This subject was touched on by such famous authors as Ibn an-Nadim (10th c.), Abu-r-Rayhan al-Bayruni (973-1048/51), Ibn Hazm (994-1064), as-Sahrastani (1076-1153), Ahmad al-Oalqasandi (1355-1418). Less known is a later work by the 14th-century Yemenite author 'All b. Muhammad b. 'Abd Allah al-Fahri - Kitab talhis al-bayan fi dikr firaq ahl al-adyan.! In the Moslem literature of the Ottoman era one can hardly find any work of this kind. Occasional testimonies occur in itineraries, mainly by pilgrims to Je­ rusalem. This material is rather extensive (4th to 14th c. there are more than thirty such reports) and insufficiently studied. Valuable observa­ tions for the history of the doctrines of the Church of the East could be found in journals of missionary travellers interested in confessional mat­ ters. The books by Giovanni di Pian del Carpine and Willem van Roys­ broeck, also known as Guillaume de Roubrouquis (in whose journal An­ dre de Longjumeau's travel notes are mentioned) are of special interest. They are followed by Marco Polo's book and the notes by Giovanni di Monte Corvino. The later testimonies of the European travellers to Asia could be related to this body of documents as well. It is also worth men­ tioning the journal of Jan Huygen van Linschoten (travel 1595-96)3 and the book by Nicolas Trigault (travels 1607-19).4 From the middle of the 15th century, the relationship between the Church of the East and the Western world is witnessed to by another group of documents. They appear as a result of appeals to the Holy See for the 'restoring of communion' made by separate communities of the Church of the East. The first appeal of the sort was made by Metropoli­ tan Timotheus of Tarsus, responsible for the community of the Christian refugees who had fled from Timur to Cyprus. On behalf of his flock, he presented a confession of faith and asked for reception into full com­ munion with 'the Holy Roman Church'." On 7th August 1445, this appeal was read out during a sessions of the council of Florence and, at the same day, the first union with the 'Assyro-Chaldeans' was proclaimed by the papal bull Benedictus sit Deus. From 1552 onwards, such documents appear regularly. That year, Yohannan Sulaqa, the prior of the monas­ tery of Rabban Hormiz,> was sent to Rome and, on his return, became the head of a hierarchy separated from the of the Church of

2 0~~~1 ~I J) p~ J 0~1 ~ ,,;-,L:S '1S.;....J1.iJ1 ¥ .4> of.~' Moscow, 1988. 3 van Linschoten, 1596; 1598; Repr. 1885. 4 Trigautius, 1616. 5 Le Ouien, 1740, t. 2, p. 1292. 6 Voste, 1930, 1931; Rabbi, 1966, pp. 99-132, 199-230. THE CHURCH OF THE EAST AND ITS THEOLOGY 117 the East, but recognised by the .? Later on, a similar separated branch was to become the so called Chaldean Church. In Europe, concern about the Christian presence in the Near and the Far East was increased not only by reports of the Catholic orders work­ ing there, but also by publications intended for a wider reading public. Thanks to one of these publications, undertaken by a Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), interested in exotic subjects of any kind, the oldest Chinese Christian monument - the stele of Xian-fu - was first pre­ sented to Europeans." The fact that two homilies of the of the Church of the East Mar 'Eliya al-Haditi (1190) were published as an ap­ pendix to the popular Arabic Grammar by Thomas van Erpe (1584­ 1624)9 is indirect evidence of public interest in the field. Another exam­ ple of this kind was published by a learned Maronite Ibrahim al-Hakilani commonly known as Abraham Ecchellensis (1605-1664) Tractatus conti­ nens catalogum librorum Chaldaeorum, tam ecclesiasticorum quam pro­ [anorurn'? by Mar 'Abdiso' bar Brika. Occasionally, extensive studies of the Eastern Churches, also concerning the Church of the East, had be­ gun to appear, such as the Historia orientalis by a Swiss philologist and theologian Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1620-1667),II the relevant sec­ tions of the dictionary Bibliotheque orientale by a French orientalist Barthelemy d'Herbelot (1625-1695),12 and Histoire critique des dogmes des chretiens orientaux by a French biblical critic and orientalist Richard Simon (1638-1712).13 As previously unknown documents were gathered, a need for their analysis and classification emerged. This was undertaken by the scholars from a Maronite family of Assemani (as-Sim'ani), above all by Joseph Simon (1687-1768), the most illustrious of them. Sent by the Pope to the East for the purpose of collecting Oriental manuscripts, he accomplished his task zealously and successfully. Manuscripts from all over the Near East were brought to the Vatican Library, and a gigantic work that Joseph Simon planned to carry out - the Bibliotheca Orientalis - was to comprise twelve volumes of which only the first four appeared.!" He also

7Voste, 1930, 1931; Habbi, 1966, pp. 99-132,199-230. S Kircher, 1636. 9 van Erpe, 1656. 10 Ecchellensis, 1653. II Hottinger, 1660. 12 d'Herbelot, 1697. 13 Simon, 1711. 14 Assemanus, 1719, 1721, 1725, 1728. Several unpublished volumes, already largely prepared by the author, were destroyed by fire. 118 NIKOLAIN.SELEZNYOV began the six-volume series of works by Ephrem the Syrian, of which the first three volumes he edited himself." Probably impressed by the edi­ tion, Cardinal Nicolo Antonelli published the Sancti Patris nostri Iacobi episcopi Nisibeni Sermones that were in fact homilies by Aphrahat." An­ other member of the Assemani family, Joseph Aloysius (1710-1782), also prepared a series of publications concerning the Church of the East, among which the most significant were De Catholicis seu Patriarchis Chaldaeorum et Nestorianorum commentarius historico-chronologicus'" and a Latin version of Mar 'AbdlSo' bar Brika's Collectio Canonum pub­ lished by Cardinal Angelo Mai in his Scriptorum Veterum Nova Collec­ tiO. 18 The third of the Assemanis, a nephew of the two preceding broth­ ers, Stephanus Evodius (1707-1782) was a permanent assistant to his two uncles at the Vatican Library and took the post of the keeper of the Vatican Library after the death of Josephus Simonius. Among his works it is worth mentioning the Acta Sanctorum Martyrum Orientalium et Oc­ cidentalium, the first part of which gives the history of the martyrs who suffered during the reign of the Sasanian kings of Persia.'? and Bibliothe­ cae Apostolicae Vaticanae codicum manuscriptorum catalogus'? that was prepared in collaboration with Joseph Aloysius. The second and the third parts of the first volume of the latter were on the Syriac manuscripts. Alongside with the Assemanis' works, the Oriens Christianus by a French historian and theologian Michel Le Quien (1661-1733)21 should be men­ tioned and Histoire du Christianisme des Indes by Mathurin Vayssiere de la Croze, the librarian of the king of Prussia. These works, and above all the Bibliotheca Orientalis by Joseph Si­ mon, brought to light a great number of documents concerning the his­ tory and the theology of the Church of the East and summarised the great work that had been done up to that moment in collecting the mate­ rial, thus initiating a study of them as we would understand it. So began a long scholarly process of the extensive heritage of the Church of the East, made possible through a Latin translation, that continues into our time. The voluminous works of the eighteenth century had the effect of a

IS Ephraemi Syri, 1732-1746. The series was continued by the Maronites Jesuit Mubarak and Stephanus Evodius Assemani. 16 Antonelli, 1756, 1765. 17 Assemani, J. A., 1775; repr.1969. 18 Pt. I, pp. vii, viii and 1-168; pt. II, pp. 1-268, etc.

19 Assemanus, S. E., 1748. 20 [Assernanus, S. E. & J. A.J, 1756-69. 21 Le Ouien, 1740. THE CHURCH OF THE EAST AND ITS THEOLOGY 119

Summa; further research was undertaken after a while, with another ap­ proach and in another direction. In the nineteenth century, there was a continuing increase in the number of new publications concerning, directly or not, the history and the theology of the Church of the East. Thanks to political events and trade interests, the presence of representatives of the Western world and Russia in the East grew considerably. Their impressions from actually meeting the faithful and clergymen of the Church of the East - journals, itineraries - are an important factor for our theme. Identifying them­ selves by their own denomination, the Englishmen and Americans bore witness to their encounter with 'Nestorians', and tried to re-analyse how much the doctrines of the 'Easterners' corresponded with their own. The notes of Justin Perkings (1805-1869), a minister of the Congregational church who had been a missionary in Persia since 1834 and was famous for his great contribution to translating the Bible into Modern Assyrian, are among the first." The book by a missionary physician Dr. Asahel Grant (1807-1844), in which he tried to prove he had discovered the "lost tribes" of Israel, shows how little these Westerners knew about those they dealt with.P The most interesting publications of that time was a two-volume work by George Percy Badger, The Nestorians and Their Rituals?' where he exposed and analysed the doctrines of the Church of the East basing his studies on its own confessional and liturgical litera­ ture. This work had a significant impact on an interested public. Unfor­ tunately, Badger considered the doctrines of the Church of the East in comparison with the 1/39 articles" of Anglicanism, his own denomina­ tion, which could not prevent him from making som~ mistakes. Unlike the eighteenth century studies with their tendency to summa­ rise the original works, those undertaken in the nineteenth century rep­ resent a wide range of different researches. Beside papers by the mis­ sionaries working in the Near East, some articles on the monuments of the mission of the Church of the East in the Far East" and some collec­ tions of Syriac manuscripts were published.> The history of the early councils and the authors of that time attracted a renewed interest It might happen that one and the same researcher had rather different domains of interest, but all concerned the history or the theology of

22 Perkins, 1843. 23 Grant, 1845; Laurie, 1853. 24 Badger, 1852. 25 Buchanan, 1811; Havret, 1833; Pauthier, 1857, 1858; Spasskij, 1860; Palladij (Kafa­ rov) , 1872. 26 Payne-Smith, 1864; Wright, 1870-1872; Zotenberg, 1874. 120 NIKOLAIN.SELEZNYOV

Church of the East. Thus, Eduard Sachau (1845-1930), a prominent semitologist, was involved in collecting Syriac manuscripts and studying writings of the authors of the Antiochene School as well as Christian monuments in Turkestan and China. In 1869, he published a collection of extant remnants of writings of - the fact that showed a public interest in the heritage of great authors of the Antioch­ ene and Mesopotamian traditions of exegesis and theology." In 1880­ 1882, Theodore's Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul was published by an English biblical, patristic scholar, and theologian Henry Barclay Swete (1835-1917)28; in the meantime, Jacques Forget published his dis­ sertation on Aphrahat." Works of Ignazio Guidi (1844-1935) should also be mentioned here, in particular, his study on the East-Syrian hierar­ chy." From the latter half of the 19th century on, researchers focused their studies on particular authors of the 'Eastern' tradition. At the close of the same century, some events showed, however, that one would have to study a great deal further to get an adequate and integrated notion of the tradition of the Church of the East. On 14th of November 1885, Dr. F. V. Poyarkov published a newspaper report (Vostochnoe Obozrenie, N° 44) where he wrote that he had discovered a number of grave stones with signs of the cross and inscriptions in Syriac and Turkic of the 13-14 c. near Tokmak. A similar discovery was made somewhat earlier that year by N. N. Pantusov near Pishpek (now Bishkek). These findings indicated the extensive spread of the Church of the East in the Middle Ages, and had a significant impact on researchers who issued a series of publications on the subject." It was evident, however, that some of them had been perplexed." and that the reports from Kurdistan and the cur­ rent views on the details of the theology of the Church of the East would not be adequate to understand the latter's tradition. A great deal of mate­ rial concerning the East Syriac heritage of this Church and the monu­ ments of its mission towards the East until then unknown had still to be studied.

27 Sachau, 1869. 28 Swete, 1880-1882. 29 Forget, 1882; The studies on Aphrahat were continued by Jean Parisot: Parisot, 1894, 1907. 30 Guidi, 1889. 3! Pantusov, 1886a,b; Chwolson, 1890, 1897; Lyutov, 1886; Nikol'skij, 1888; Radloff, 1888; Slutskij, 1889-1891; Rosen, 1890; Halevy, 1890; Barthold, 1893; Korsch, 1893

32 Jean Halevy (Halevy, 1890), for example, supposed, with no trace of humour, that the fact that the grave inscriptions had been dated according to the animal calendar meant that there had been some influence from Egypt! THE CHURCH OF THE EAST AND ITS THEOLOGY 121

During the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, many serious monographs as well as significant works concerning the Church of the East appeared. It would not be easy to give a summary of them since they were numerous and, in addition, they were not the result , of the work of groups or schools, but rather of individual researchers. One can only survey here the most important publications and discover­ ies of that time. The most valuable was the publication of the collection of the acts of the of the Church of the East, 5th to 7th centuries - Sunhiidos or Synodicon .Orientale, with German" and then French>' translations. Jean-Baptist Chabot who published the French Synodicon, was by that time already known for several works on the East-Syrian Church and, in particular, on the history of the famous centre of Chris­ tian Mesopotamia - the " (on which a detailed mono­ graph was later written by Arthur Voobus-") - and on Mar Narsai, an outstanding figure for the history of that School as well as for the history of the development of the theology of the Church of the East as a whole." In the Journal asiatique, where Chabot often published his arti­ cles, another important text appeared: the homily of Mar Narsai dedi­ cated to 'The Greek Doctors' - Diodore, Theodore and - in which one could see what the place was that each of them had occupied in the theological tradition of the Church of the East." In 1905 a two volume edition of homilies and hymns by Mar Narsai was issued by Rev. (1878-1937) in Mosul": in 1909 a collection of Narsai's liturgical homilies was published by Dom Richard Hugh Con­ nolly and Edmund ."? Publications of that kind contributed to a revision of the common prejudices about the East-Syrian tradition and showed that its connec­ tion with 'Nestorianism', around which a scandal had broken in Constan­ tinopole in 5th c., was just of a limited kind. They also demonstrated how Theodore and Nestorius, rejected eventually by all Western Christi­ anity, had in fact been perceived in the East. When, in 1910, abbe Francois Nau published Liber Heraclidis, a translation from Syriac of an

33 Braun, 1900, 34 Chabot, 1902. 35 Chabot, 1896. 36 Voobus, 1962, 1965, See also: Scher, 1908. 37 Chabot, 1905. 38 Martin, 1899-1900. 39 Mingana, 1905. 40 Connelly-Bishop, 1909. 122 NIKOLAIN.SELEZNYOV apologetical treatise by Nestorius," the academic community was there­ fore ready to see there something less definite than 'Nestorianism'. In the meantime, writings of the great authors of the Church of the East went on being published. In 1915, in Corpus scriptorum Chris­ tianorum orientalium series, Arthur Vaschalde published under a Latin title the main Christological treatise by Mar Babai Rabba the Liber de unione.t? Somewhat earlier, in the same series, there appeared a collec­ tion of letters of Catholicos Mar Isoyahb III, a contemporary to Mar Babai." Some publications on their opponent, Martyrius-Sahdona, were issued as well." A collection of letters of Mar Timotheus 1,45 some of which had been of obvious value for the development of the theology of the Church of the East, were published in those years, as well as a monograph on this influential catholicos by Jerome Labourr" and the main polemical treatise by the metropolitan of Nisibis Mar Eliya bar Sinaya." In addition to the Pearl by Mar 'Abdiso' bar Brika, published by Joseph Simon Assemani, on the initiative of the Assyrian priest Joseph de Kelaita, the Paradise ofEden by the same metropolitan was printed in 1916 in Urmia and reprinted in 1928 in Mosu1.48 Having mentioned the editions of Urmia and Mosul, it is worth point­ ing out that in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, the activity of Western missions in the Near East (including the Russian Or­ thodox one) was especially intensive. Most of them worked with a 'Uniate' scenario, converting into their own confession a number of Assyrians and all that they left them from their native Church were at best only the outer forms. The Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mis­ sion worked, however, with a rather different approach. The Anglican missionaries were able to understand the correctness and value of the East-Syrian tradition and to demonstrate this to the Western Chistian world. George Percy Badger (1815-88), Arthur John Maclean (1858­ 1943), William Ainger Wigram (1873-1953) unanimously protested that accusation against the Church of the East of being heretical was unjust."? That the Roman-Catholic Mission, whose activity resulted, in 1830, in setting up a parallel 'Chaldean' Church, in communion with Rome, has

41 Nau, 1910; an English, less accurate, translation: Driver-Hodgson, 1925. 42 Vaschalde, 1915; see also Grumel, 1923-1924. 43 Duval, 1904-1905. 44 Goussen, 1897; Bedjan, 1902. 45 Braun, 1914-1915. 46 Labourt, 1904. 47 Horst, 1886. 48 de Kelaita, 1916, 1928. 49 Badger, 1852; Maclean-Browne, 1892; Wigram, 1908, 1920; Coakley, 1992, 1995. THE CHURCH OF THE EAST AND ITS THEOLOGY 123 been well documented. Unfortunately, these documents have not been available to US, though two books could be mentioned as an introduction to the history of relationship between the Church of Mesopotamia and the Church of Rome: Genuinae relationes by Samuel Giamil, published in 1902, and Syro-Orientales, seu Chaldaei Nestoriani et Romanorum Pon­ tificum primatus by Mar Giwargis 'AbdlSo' Khayyat, a Chaldean patri­ arch." The Russian Orthodox mission began its activities soon after the Russian military forces came to Urmia in 1828. Thanks to these events, a series of preliminary historical published surveys on the Assyrians ap­ peared in Russia, as well as on what concerned their Church's past. It is important to mention an article by a Russian missionary who worked in the Russian mission in China, Archimandrite Palladij Kafarov's Starinnye sledy khristianstva v Kitae po kitajskim istochnikam [The ancient traces of Chistianity in China according to the Chinese sources], that appeared in 1872. Both the above mentioned discoveries in Semirechje and the 'conversion' of about 8,000 Assyrians to the Russian Orthodoxy which was celebrated on 25th of March 1898 in St. Petersburg, aroused a great interest in the tradition of the Church of the East among Russian schol­ ars. Publications on the history of the East-Syrian Christianity." its spread in Turkestan.v and the Antiochene School of exegesis and theol­ ogy'" filled all the periodicals. Censorship did not, however, leave much room for manoeuvre to theologians, but historians and orientalists felt free enough. In Soviet Russia, under much more sever censorship, any theological research became impossible at all, and only the Syriac lan­ guage and culture went on being studied by the efforts of N. V. Pigulev­ skaya (1894-1970),54 a disciple of P. K. Kokovtsov (1861-1941) and A. P. Alyavdin (1885-1965); as to the Ideengeschichte, however, she only followed the Western authors. The archaeological researches going on in the Soviet period, very valuable in themselves, are of little interest for the history of doctrines. Those Russian theologians who emigrated to the

50 Giamil, 1902; Khayyat, 1870; See also: Beltrami, 1933 and Levi della Vida, 1948. 51 Maloma, 1873; Sofonija, 1876; Bolotov, 1901; translation of A Short History ofSyriac Literature by William Wright, edited and provided with rich notes and appendices by P. K. Kokovtsov: Rajt [Wright], 1902. 52 Pantusov, 1886a,b; Chwolson, 1890, 1897; Lyutov, 1886; Nikol'skij, 1888; Radloff, 1888; Slutskij, 1889-1891; Rosen, 1890; Halevy, 1890; Barthold, 1893; Kokovtsov, 1907­ 1908. 53 Sokolov, 1887; Guryev, 1890; Glubokovskij, 1890. 54 Complete list of N. V. Pigulevskaya's (also known as Pigoulevskaia, by a French transcription of her name) publications see: N. V. Pigulevskaya, Blizhnij Vostok. Vizantija. Slavyane, Leningrad, 1976, pp. 50-62 or Atra, 6 (1996), Saint-Petersburg-Chicago, pp. 19-21. 124 NIKOLAIN.SELEZNYOV

West soon after 1917, included, like their Western colleagues, special chapters on the Antiochene and Mesopotamian Schools into their works on the Church history and dogmatics.55 The middle of the twentieth century as a whole was characterised, in what concerned the studies on the Church of the East, by the following phenomena. The results and consequences of the activity of Western missions among Assyrians were analysed and some approaches revised. Sudden political changes in the Near East prompted the resumption of what had been done on the threshold of a new historical period. Works on Church history and history of doctrines appearing in that time included relevant chapters on East-Syrian Christianity in which the new finds and researches were considered. A very important contribu­ tion to studying was made then by Cardinal E. Tisserant (1884-1972).56 A renewed interest in history of the Antioch­ ene School was inspired by two publications of Alphonse Mingana ­ Theodore of Mopsuestia's commentary on the Nicene Creed and his sac­ ramentological homilies, both translated from Syriac." Many research­ ers recognised that in the Syriac version the thought of Theodore sounds much more moderate, which indicated one of the most significant mo­ ments in the history of the conflict between the two types - Syrian and Greek - of theological thinking. In the same epoch, the number of archaeological discoveries concern­ ing the East-Syrian mission towards the East was growing. The expedi­ tions of Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot prompted, in particular, intensive studies of Sogdian culture. Documents in the Sogdian language of an apparently Christian provenance were discovered during these expedi­ tions, and the field of studies attracted the attention of researchers. 58 An increased number of witnesses to the spread of the Church of the East in the Far East and, in particular, in China enabled a preliminary analysis to be made by that time. These materials were sorted out and published by a Japanese scholar Yoshiro Saeki.>? It is especially notice­ able that he also tried to analyse the doctrinal content of the Eastern documents. Later studies in this field focused mainly on the Far Eastern religious systems, making the process of ideological interaction between them and the missionaries of the Church of the East more understand-

55 Florovskij, 1931, 1933; Kartashev, 1932; Bulgakov, 1933. 56 Tisserant, 1931 (and other relevant articles), 1957. 57 Mingana, 1932, 1933. 58 Muller, 1913, 1934. 59 Saeki, 1937. THE CHURCH OF THE EAST AND ITS THEOLOGY 125 able. Some publications on Christianity in India - another fruit of the mission of the Church of the East - appearing at that time, are less use­ ful for the history of the doctrines. With the development of new methodologies and technologies, schol­ ars were encouraged to continue studying the authors and documents which were already known, so as to find more historical and theological details and also to get a more integrated notion of the theological con­ ceptions of different authors of the Church of the East and of its tradi­ tion as a whole. The second half of the twentieth century was marked by special studies on particular subjects. The Assyrian communities which were formed out of emigrants from the Near East settled in the West, meanwhile, acquired strength. The West met again the Church of the East, now in its own territories. First­ hand information on its heritage became available. The Assyrian emi­ grants themselves made publications, among the most significant of which the two-volume collection of the homilies by Mar Narsai'" can be listed, as well as an English translation of the Pearl by Mar 'AbdiSo' bar Brika of Nisibis made by the Catholicos of the Church of the East Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, who then lived in the USA.61 The theological consultations organised by the Pro Oriente Founda­ tion, culminating in the signing, in 1994, of the Common Christo logical Declaration (the original text of which was composed in Syriac'") be­ tween the Catholicos-Patriarch of the Church of the East Mar Dinha IV and Pope John-Paul II, were especially significant not only for the mu­ tual understanding and dialogue between the Church of the East and the Roman-, but also for all other Churches. The consulta­ tions upon the key issues of dogmatics and sacramentology continue within the Pro Oriente dialogue.s'

Bibliography

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Institute for Oriental Nikolai N. Seleznyov and Classical Studies Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow) [email protected]

SUMMARY

This essay offers a concise overview of the attempts to develop our understanding of East-Syrian Christianity known as the Church of the East, and of studies concerning its history and theological concepts. Beginning with early contacts between Persian Christians and their 'Roman' neighbours, the author further deals with the research that has taken place in modern times. He demonstrates how various aspects became known to the West­ ern academic community, including the East-Syriac version of the Antiochene theological heritage, the Christological controversies which challenge conventional views, and the ex­ tensive growth of this Church to the East. The most important authors and publications are listed and a description is given of the distinctive characteristics of the stages of this history of studies.